


Just

by BeesKnees



Category: Hunger Games Series - All Media Types, Hunger Games Trilogy - Suzanne Collins, The Hunger Games (Movies)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Canonical Character Death, F/M, Gen, Post-Series
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-14
Updated: 2014-07-14
Packaged: 2018-02-08 21:19:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,128
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1956513
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BeesKnees/pseuds/BeesKnees
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Overnight, she goes from being the crazy girl from District Four to being Finnick Odair’s widow. For just a little bit, she thinks, she would like to be just Annie Odair.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Just

Overnight, she goes from being the crazy girl from District Four to being Finnick Odair’s widow.

For just a little bit, she thinks, she would like to be just Annie Odair. 

 

The bump of her belly draws attention wherever she goes. Too many eyes, too many roaming hands all drawing slowly over her stomach. They stare at her with something akin to awe. They are desperate to touch Finnick Odair’s son, the last remnant of a man who has risen to the status of savior and martyr. Everything becomes too loud in the Capitol. She can’t stand how everyone crowds around her; she misses the reassuring curve of Finnick’s arm around her waist, the other keeping the world at a distance. With him gone, the world comes flooding in and she’s drowning. 

Almost everyone advises her to stay in the Capitol until the baby is born.

Finnick prepared everything for you, Plutarch says patiently, going over paper after paper with her. He left lump sums of money in several different places for you — before the Quell of course, but prepared if the government fell or the rebels failed. You could live comfortably in the Capitol for as long as you want, afford the best hospital care. Plutarch says this so matter-of-factly, as if the massive amounts of money Finnick has left behind can replace him in her life. Maybe for someone like Plutarch, this would work. But Annie just stares uncomprehendingly at the rows of money, the accounts in the Capitol, the money that was left with the Plutarch, the safe that was left behind in Four. 

I want to go home, she breathes. And the first thing she does with all the money that Finnick left for her is to buy a train ticket back to Four. 

Travel between the districts is more free than it’s ever been and there’s a crowd of people disembarking when she reaches Four. She lets herself be carried by them, but she is the only one whose feet follow the path up to Victors’ Village. She lingers near the gateway, staring at the dark shapes of the houses in front of her. It’s like a shadow of a former life. It seems almost obscene that Mags’ house is still standing, although it looks like most of the houses have been ransacked at some point. 

Her last memory of being here swells to the forefront of her mind — the Peacekeepers coming to collect her, storming not her house, but Finnick’s, where she had been cradled in front of the television. It had been dark for precious seconds, Finnick’s visage flickering off it after the explosion of lightning that sent Finnick flying through the air. 

The Peacekeepers had pulled her up and away, and it was only then that she started screaming, a sound that had been bottled up in her throat for the last twenty minutes. Finnick’s father had tried to stop them (You’re not taking her, he’d said. You’re not taking this girl.) But he hadn’t been able to do anything. They’d carried her out the door, and she’d heard Finnick’s father shout. 

The baby kicks at her, pushing her out of the terror that threatens to encase her mind. She rests her hand over her stomach and starts walking again — she goes to Finnick’s house first, because that’s where she always belonged anyway. The door is closed, but not locked, and Annie pushes it open. Some of the furniture is pushed over, but it looks like most of the things that have been taken are food and clothes; Finnick’s sisters may have even taken it to give away. 

She doesn’t know what happened to Finnick’s family — mother, father, three sisters. There hadn’t been any news in District 13, so Annie and Finnick had artfully avoided the topic. 

Now, Annie begins to gather up the remains of their life. She heads up to Finnick’s room. Pictures of them litter the room — a lifetime ago, a different girl ago. She holds them between her shaking hands. The last necklace she had been working on for him still rests on the bedside table, the shells she had picked out loosely sprawling next to it. She lowers her head and cries warm but silent tears. 

Was it better to have been Finnick Odair’s wife for a handful of weeks or his secret lover for a lifetime? (These are her most selfish thoughts. In the end, it is better now because, deep in her heart, she knows that it is better for her son to born with no father than to be reaped into the Hunger Games.)

 

Hours later, there are footsteps. She looks up at the silhouette in the doorway. Sara — Finnick’s youngest sister. She looks so different now, so grown up. She’s thinner than she had been when Annie left. Out of his three sisters, Sara had looked the most like Finnick.

“Annie,” Sara says, voice full of surprise and barely concealed pain. “Someone said you had come home, but I—” She didn’t believe it, and Annie manages to smile, although she doesn’t let go of the pictures she’s holding.

Sara crosses the room, kneels down and hugs her tightly. The bump of Annie’s stomach stays in between them, but Annie gives in and clings to Sara. 

“Don’t stay here,” Sara whispers. “Come back down to town. Aerona and I are staying there.” There’s no mention of Coral or of Finnick’s parents. Annie knows what the familiar silence means. She shuts her eyes tightly. 

“I belong here,” Annie answers. It’s where all of her happiest moments happened.

 

Her marriage papers don’t hold up well now that the government is reorganizing. She pleads with a man in a cheaply made suit for the better part of three hours. She has only a single certificate from District 13, something she had clutched all the to the Capitol and all the way here. 

“Legally, you’re still Annie Cresta,” he says, and her throat goes too tight, because everyone has seen her wedding. She doesn’t know why it matters so much now. She’s spent most of her life standing at Finnick’s side without being recognized, but she needs this now. She needs to be Finnick’s wife in every way. She needs to be told her wedding was real, that the slim gold ring she wears means something. 

She goes home in tears and sits on the floor of her house. She clings to the last letter Finnick left her, tucked into the safe when he didn’t think he was coming home from the Quell. Just three words — I love you. She presses her lips to them and wills the world to stop moving, to go backward, because she’d give anything to feel the warm press of his arms around her again. This is a constant pain — one that she can’t even allow herself to give into, because she needs to be a mother now.

 

Johanna Mason shows up days later. A hero and not. Johanna is a forgotten one, portrayed as more victim — but too angry to allow herself to be called that, so she scares off any sympathy she might have garnered. She is underplayed; the world forgets that it was Johanna Mason who cut out Katniss Everdeen’s tracking device, because she wasn’t airlifted out of the arena herself. They don’t know she trained for weeks to be allowed to invade the Capitol, too, and then was shunted aside at the last moment, deemed too unstable when the other lot of crazies — Peeta, Katniss, Finnick — were all allowed to go.

She is still too thin, her hair mussed, vision terrifying and focused. She shows up on Annie’s doorstep, but doesn’t have a reason for why she’s there. It might be because victors need each other as lifelines, now more than ever, but there’s precariously few of them. 

(Besides, it was Johanna who told Annie. Johanna who stumbled out of the room where she was being contained, screaming, Where the fuck is Annie Cresta, where is she? Desperate to find her before she saw the stream on the television that showed Finnick’s body collapsing into darkness, free of his head. 

Don’t you fucks get it, Johanna had spat, when she encountered resistance. And they hadn’t, because only victors memorize the games, especially those before their own. It had only been Johanna who had remembered that it was a beheading that had shattered Annie’s mental state, and who knew what this one would do?

It’s Annie Odair though, Annie had wanted to say when Johanna came busting into her room, scared to touch her, but unable not to, and it was Haymitch who had picked her up off the floor and carried her away, but Annie doesn’t really remember much past that, although she knows Johanna had been a sentry at her bedside for a long time.)

So, maybe it’s that familiar pull that brings Johanna here, a role she knows how to fulfill. They’ve always orbited each other quietly, only meeting a few times before becoming familiar with each other’s screams in the Capitol, and then practically living together in District 13. Annie is part of Finnick’s life in District Four, and Johanna was his companion in the Capitol, and the two had always been curious about the other. They both know there were two Finnicks, Annie important in the one life, Johanna in the other. 

“They won’t recognize my marriage,” Annie says before Johanna even steps inside. 

(Johanna needs missions. Annie gives her one.)

Johanna marches down to where Four’s government is being housed right now, finds the man Annie had been speaking to and is in his face in an instant. Her shoulders arched back, spine curved with dangerous purpose. There is a fire in her that has been ravaging her since her games. She gathers up the lapels of the man’s suit and shoves him hard against the wall, once, and then again. Annie flinches, but she makes herself look. 

“You know who she is, you fuck,” Johanna says, spitting. “Look me in the eye and tell me you don’t believe she’s married.” 

“The paperwork—” the man tries to stammer.

“Paperwork?” Johanna hisses. “You’ll make the paperwork all right.” She gets an arm across his throat. “You know who I am, right? Who knows what I’ll do. You make this work, because you don’t want me to come back.”

By the end of the day, Annie Odair’s marriage is legally recognized by the new government — weeks after her husband’s death has been recognized.

 

Johanna doesn’t leave. They fall into strange routines together. Annie cooks and makes sure that Johanna eats, and Johanna finds her a doctor that they can trust. She makes repairs around the house, buys the things that are gone, builds the things they can’t find. Annie makes Johanna new clothes, cuts her hair when it’s finally long enough to need it. 

They sleep together in the same bed, because it’s easier to soothe away nightmares. Neither of them likes to be touched, but having somebody nearby often counts for a lot. Johanna doesn’t sleep a lot at first, but once she seems to establish this as a safe space, she sleeps deeply, for hours on end. 

Annie watches her in the dark sometimes, her face turned away, body curved into the space where Finnick once slept. 

She’s heard that Finnick and Johanna are the two victors who are most alike. She looks at the picture of Finnick on the table. 

 

As she nears the end of her pregnancy, it takes up a lot of time. There are things they need to get ready, and her feet and back always ache. It’s hard to walk down on the beach, but she and Johanna still go.

It’s unsettling when she has days that are so busy that they’re normal. She’ll look up suddenly as she’s getting ready for bed and realize she hasn’t thought about Finnick once. She’ll cry then, deep wracking sobs on the bathroom floor, because she isn’t ready to let him go yet, and the pain of him is all she has left. 

 

But those days grow more and more frequent after Tristan is born. She has to heal and then she and Johanna are taking care of the baby. He is healthy, and for that, Annie is grateful. They alternate getting up in the middle of the night, and Johanna hates changing diapers, but will do it anyway. She never does babytalk, but Annie has caught her, once or two, reading to him from the tattered books they managed to find. 

There’s no question that Johanna will stay. 

Tristan is around six months old when Aerona and Sara take him for a night, leaving Annie and Johanna with a surplus of free time. Johanna manages to procure several bottles of good wine, and for the first time in months, they’re both drunk, splayed out on the beach near Victors’ Village — uninhabited by the rest of Four, who treat the area as if it’s haunted.

Johanna starts telling her stories about some of the more hilarious moments in the Capitol — mostly about her stylists, and soon enough, they’re laughing. Without realizing it, they ease into the topic of Finnick when Johanna makes some comment about Finnick’s stylist trying to dress her. Johanna pauses for just a moment, but the bridging was so neat that there’s not the familiar flare of pain that Annie expects. She just keeps laughing, and is glad to hear about this more enjoyable moment of Finnick’s she never shared. Emboldened, Johanna keeps going. 

“What was it like to sleep with him anyway?” Johanna asks.

Annie pauses. She knows it’s a question that a lot of people have probably wanted to ask her, but only Johanna would dare. What was it like being wanted by the most-desired man in the country?

“He was actually quite shy in bed,” Annie says, glancing down at her hands. She can feel a flare of heat on her cheeks. “Maybe shy isn’t the right word, I don’t know. He liked to be told what to do. He liked to please, but wasn’t always entirely certain of what he liked.” It had been a far cry from what she had been expecting. He was confident with everyone else, but that was another part of an act. When he’d been with her, he’d said that it had been difficult for him to really express his pleasure, because everything always sounded so fake — had been something he’d twisted before to use against others. His own body had always been a secondary thought to him, perhaps because sex was so perfunctory by the time they started dating. But he’d loved getting her off. 

“Huh,” Johanna says, more noise than a word. She looks up at the sky. “What an asshole.” She says it with a fondness that Annie has become familiar with even if she doesn’t fully understand.

“He wasn’t,” Annie says, and she’s not gearing up for a fight. It’s a simple statement of facts, as if she feels the need to make the clarification this time for some unknown reason.

“He was,” Johanna answers. “And he should have never fucking gone anyway.” Her voice goes from joking to angry so fast that it takes Annie too long to catch up.

“Don’t,” she starts to plead.

“No,” Johanna answers. “No. You should be angry with him. It’s all right to be angry with him, because he was an asshole for going — needing to pretend like he could save anyone. He was so fucked up at the end, but all he had to do was fucking stay and everything was here, everything was waiting for him.”

Annie starts crying because she can’t not. She covers both of her ears with her hands as if she can drown out Johanna’s venomous words. She doesn’t want to be angry with Finnick, and has never let herself fixate on the points that Johanna is making. Finnick was who he was — and that was the sort of man who went because he thought he could help, and that was why she had loved him in the end. It wouldn’t have been honest to him, to what they were, for him to stay. Even if it meant being with her. Spending a life with her. Seeing and raising their son.

“Stop!” Annie says sharply, and this time Johanna complies, stopping as quickly as she’d begun. The air between them settles. She knows well enough that Johanna won’t apologize, because it would be a lie. She listens to the quick inhale-exhale of Johanna’s breathing as the other woman struggles to come up with something to say.

“I was afraid of you at first,” Annie says abruptly. “Not like the others.” She says, sensing the question that will follow the announcement. “Because of how Finnick acted around you. He slept with everyone, and they didn’t mean anything, and I understood that. But then there was you. And he never slept with you.”

She doesn’t turn to look at Johanna, and Johanna continues her silence. Annie can hear the pace of her breathing go off. 

 

Johanna stays and Annie never questions it. It’s just the pieces of their lives following back into place, reconfigured. (And some pieces are gone forever, and that’s just a part of what life is now. It’s mourning and pressing onward without letting the two trip each other.)

Annie stands on the peer of District Four, watching from a distance where Johanna and Tristan are in the shallow waters, Johanna’s hands deftly supporting Tristan’s belly as his arms spring forward in the water, trying to propel himself in the waves. His laughter is infectious, audible even from here.

She’d received a letter from Katniss the other day. It had started off with the usual, with how she was fine, and Peeta was fine, and Haymitch was fine, and they’ll try to come visit soon. But in some unknown moment, Katniss had veered away from her usual topics, had asked how Annie can’t be afraid for Tristan every moment. How she could bear to bring a son into this world of theirs. 

Annie watches Tristan, and misses Finnick, and thinks of when she first came back to Four, uncertain how she could be anything she was supposed to be. Uncertain she was anything at all anymore.

It’s an act of love, she wrote back to Katniss. A promise between you and your partner at first, that you’re going to bring something better in this world. And then a pact between you and the world that you’ll protect him when you can and prepare him for when you can’t.

Johanna looks up at her and smiles. And Annie Odair smiles back.


End file.
